Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy. It seems like an eternity and yet in someways, for me, it seem like yesterday. Now I was only 4 years old at the time of JFK’s death but I do have a few recollections. The clearest recollection is that of being at my aunts house looking at all the pictures of what was called the Zapruder film. More
When politicians try to “punish the rich” it is the middle class that pays the price. History agrees as I will show you later. But lets take a practical example.
What would happen if movie theaters all raised the price of tickets to $75 per seat. They would all get rich correct? Of course not. People would find something else to do and empty theater seats would insure less money to deposit in the bank. You could also lay off all but one lonely worker to run the concessions.
I’ve always believed based on actual numbers that lower tax rates increase revenues. The goal of movie theaters is to find the sweet spot where they charge the most they can while still filling as many seats as possible.
If you “punish the rich” enough, like the former movie watchers, they will check out and find something else to do with their money besides put it at risk in business ventures. More
I rarely watch the NFL anymore. So I was surprised to hear people talking last week about the NFL replacement referees. Of course things really exploded when the final play of the Monday Night Football Game turned out to be a game deciding controversy.
When I hear non-sports oriented friends expressing outrage, well that interests me. So I started scanning the internet, Facebook and twitter. I found some general consensus of opinion.
What I didn’t see anyone questioning was,
First off, there appear to be 121 union referees in the NFL. They earn between $70,000 and $200,000 for about a half-years work at 20-25 hours a week. For most, this is a second job. Supplemental income so to speak. They have a pension plan that projects to pay out about $100,000 a year for a referee that retires after 20 years of service.
Tell me, who gets a six-figure annual retirement check for 20 years of part time work?
The internet consensus seems to go something like this, “millions of dollars are riding on their decisions; they should be payed well.” Which in response, one twitter user mentioned that he works full time making life-and-death decisions as a paramedic and he only makes $30,000. Needless to say, he didn’t have a lot of sympathy.
The NFL revenues are driven by viewership. With all this chaos going on I’m pretty sure more people are going to be watching the next few weeks. Everyone loves to watch a train wreak.
It just might be the first reality TV that is — real.
Long term, the NFL will weed out the worst refs and continue training and replacing others. Eventually the screw ups will become less and less. No one in their right mind thinks there are only 120 people in the world capable of refereeing an NFL game. So at some point the “real” refs will realize that they are quickly being forgotten.
People will start to remember that they never really liked those old zebras anyway.
My prediction is the referees will settle for the current offer, with a couple of throw away concessions from the NFL. The current offer replaces, going forward, the existing pension plan with a 401k in which the NFL is willing to contribute at a rate of 10% of salary. Who gets such a generous retirement contribution these days? This, after all, isn’t the Chicago teachers union.
(Detailed facts are hard to come by since this is a labor dispute. Â So if you find a better source that shows my figures to be wrong leave a comment and I’ll check it out. Â In general I’m pretty confident the figures used are pretty accurate)
The following is a guest post by my long time friend Russell Green. A fellow Oregon Duck Fan, Russell’s backyard is the home of Duck Gnome.
The Fed is doing a new round of QE3 — Quantitative Easing Round 3 — and buying up mortgages at $40 billion per month, or something like that.
The condensed version is the Fed is printing more money so that we can keep borrowing it. Seems like sound economic policy to me. (Not!!) Before long our dollar will be worth a couple of pesos.
Although not exactly the same, I think I will ask my board to raise my salary More
The days are getting shorter and Fall is in the air. That means its time for Football.
The Oregon Duck’s redshirt freshman quarterback, Marcus Mariota, will be a sensation. Why? I expect him to be one of the most accurate passers that will have ever played at Oregon. Secondly, his passing will be in stark contrast to Oregon’s last quarterback. Daron Thomas was an excellent decision maker — a mediocre thrower. In addition, Mariota is fast enough to beat most defenders in a foot race. It may not happen in the first game but I expect heads to be turning by the third week.
How good was Oregon’s last recruiting class? More
Today the NCAA announced that they were handing down sanctions for the scandal surrounding Jerry Sandusky and his conviction for child molestation.
Such sanctions will relegate Penn State to the has-beens of college football. Â It is just not possible to have a reasonably competitive program with those kind of sanctions.
The question; is it fair?
The mob mentality thinks it may not be enough. Â I would argue, based on what we know today, any NCAA sanctions are misguided. More
The housing market has been though a lot the last couple of years and most of it has been negative. There is constant news about new foreclosures and 98% of those who know what a short sale is had no idea 3 years ago. Personally I’ve watched the value of my house drop about 25%.
Where does it end? I’ve looked at some data this week that seems to indicate that the market here in the Salem-Keizer area may have bottomed out. Let me explain. More